A Life Wasted

Volcano

Knowing she needed to get me away from Red, Mary found a temporary place for us to rent two miles up the road. It belonged to a sweet older couple Mary had made friends with. They called it the "Bunk House" because they rented it to fishermen for outrageous fees during the salmon run, but it was empty through the winter so we got it cheap. The couple were grandparent age and made a living through their small jewelry store where they sold jewelry they made themselves. Great folks.

Our quarters were temporary so we had to house hunt through winter, which is difficult as most Alaskans just hunker down to survive and do little. We couldn't do any serious house hunting until April, but we did what we could. To fight boredom I cut trees on state property, which is legal fire wood. After we had all the wood we would need I sold cords of cut and split firewood to people nearby. Much different from the work I did in previous years but I found it satisfying.

On a delivery of firewood to Moose Pass I took my son Clay with me. The customer made custom knives and had a small knife shop. After I dumped the wood Clay and I went inside to warm up and collect for the wood. While in his shop we watched the man work on a knife and were both mesmerized. He made all kinds of knives, but his specialty was large knives he forged from the steel of a truck's leaf spring. He demonstrated the strength of his product by inserting the tip of a completed $700 knife with a polished walrus tusk handle into a slot a foot off the ground, then had me stand on the handle. Under my 225 pounds the knife flexed a little, but did not bend. When I pulled it out of the slot it was undamaged. I loved that knife. I held the knife and tried to figure out how to explain to my wife I had bought a $700 knife on a firewood delivery. The old guy saw that I loved the blade so he saved me by offering to trade for firewood. "Keep it," he said. The two cords of firewood I'd delivered were a down payment. The rest I would cut and deliver over the next month. When I showed the knife to John I learned that his knives were widely known and collected. He was considered the best knife maker in Alaska. Perhaps the best in the United States. I was honored to own one. For years I remembered his name, but it alludes me now. Years later I checked on him and learned the old guy had passed on, but his son now ran the shop and carried on the family trade.

On the way home with my new toy Clay and I noticed an eagle flying low circles near the road. This was at the junction of the Seward and Sterling Highways. The eagle was flying circles over what looked like a frozen mud puddle formed by runoff from the two roads. A few miles back we had stopped to take photos of two eagles eating a salmon pulled through a hole in a frozen lake's ice, so Clay said the eagle must see a fish under the ice. By this point we had stopped and I pulled out my camera. I told my son I didn't think so because the big puddle couldn't possible hold a fish. The instant these words were out of my mouth the mature bald eagle dove into the ice with his talons out. He broke through the ice, struggled in the shallow water for a moment, then pulled out a large salmon. The eagle flapped and struggled with the big fish until he'd moved his catch away from the hole then killed the fish with his beak. Clay and I watched this from thirty feet away. I was so mesmerized I hadn't taken a single shot with the Nikon I held.

"Yeah, dad. No fish in that mud puddle," my seven year-old son said dead-pan. I could only laugh. Moving slow not to disturb the eagle's lunch we walked to the edge of the "mud puddle" to figure this out. It was as shallow as I first thought. I said someone must have put the fish there. Clay pointed to a culvert under the road and asked if he could have swam through there. We went to the other side of the road and found a small stream that connected to the mud puddle via the pipe that ran under the road. From what I knew of the area geography I was sure the stream would flow into the Kenai River, which had to be five or more mile through the woods to the south. Amazingly the salmon swam nearly 100 miles up the Kenai River, five or more miles up the small stream, then under the road and into the mud puddle to lay its eggs in the same place it was born. It was almost unbelievable, but my smart son and I agreed this had to be the answer.

On December 14, 1989, Mount Redoubt-100 miles southwest of Anchorage and thirty miles across Cook Inlet from Kenai-erupted and sent a massive ash cloud into the sky. The volcano experienced 23 major explosive events that lasted until April 1990. It would be the second costliest volcano in U.S. history. During one of the eruptions KLM flight 867, headed to Anchorage, flew through Mount Redoubt's ash cloud. The caustic volcanic ash caused all four of the Boeing 747's engines to fail at 25,000 feet. After falling more than two miles the pilot's managed to restart the engines and safely land the 747. Until this event it was unknown that a high altitude volcanic cloud could cause so much damage to a jet engine. In the aftermath of this event all air traffic in central Alaska was canceled.

Recall my friend and pastor Larry McDivette from Ohio. I should have never told Larry and his son about skinning that black bear because Larry was bit by the Great Adventure Bug and he joined us in Alaska. He put his Ohio farm up for sale, but being more responsible than I, Larry came to Alaska alone to find a job and house before moving his family. At the time of Mount Redoubt's eruption Larry lived alone in an Anchorage apartment. He had a week off work for Christmas so Larry drove down to the Kenai to spend the holiday with us. That same night Larry's wife Linda called with the sad news that Larry's dad had died. I was glad Larry was with us and not alone in Anchorage, but it was difficult to see my friend in so much pain.

Larry's dad lived in Arizona so he needed to go there to be with the rest of his family for the funeral. The problem was Mount Redoubt's eruption had shut down mainland Alaska's air traffic for the foreseeable future. The nearest place he could catch a plane was Seattle. When we realized this Mary and I looked at each other. Wordlessly we agreed when my wife nodded to me. "I'll drive you to Seattle," I told my friend. It was five days till Christmas and the drive to Seattle was a dangerous 2,591 mile trip across the unpredictable winter roads of Alaska, the Yukon Territory and British Columbia, but my wife trusted me to succeed. The odds that I would make it home for Christmas were nil. But Larry was a brother to us so Mary wanted me to help him get home.

I had not driven the Alaska Highway in the winter so had no idea what to expect, or even if it could be done, so I called John for information. John said it was possible to drive to Seattle in December. He said there would be lots of snow, but that could be handled with studded snow tires, chains and careful driving. The real danger was the temperature. Temperatures in the parts of Alaska, Yukon and northern British Columbia we would drive through were brutally cold. It was possible we would encounter temperatures cold enough to kill the car. Should that happen in a remote stretch we'd be in trouble. The only sections of the route that weren't remote where the few places the road passed through a community and those were hundreds of miles apart.

Larry wanted to take his car, which he'd had prepared for harsh winter the previous day before leaving Anchorage. His tires were all studded and he had chains. A day ago Larry thought driving to the Kenai to visit us was going into the bush. Neither he nor I had seen anything as remote as we were about to encounter. John advised me to take a little known short cut called the Cassiar Cutoff that would cut 200 miles off the trip to Seattle. He said it was an extremely remote road that was rarely plowed, but it was used in the winter by logging trucks so the snow would be packed down and passable. He did suggest we take the road slow as there were dangerous drop offs. Everything John said proved to be true, though "extremely remote" turned out to be an understatement.